SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — The Honourable Marilou McPhedran, C.M.

Thank you, dear colleagues, and thank you, Your Honour.

As a senator for Manitoba, I recognize that I live on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Cree, Anishinaabe, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Red River Métis Nation. I acknowledge that the Parliament of Canada is situated on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory.

Honourable senators, on Monday, we welcomed the thirty-first Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency Louise Arbour, to the Senate, and we were inspired by the words of our Poet Laureate, Chimwemwe Undi, who is originally from Manitoba. She said:

This way, easier to teach than travel, calls us to speak to echo the silenced, to listen first to understand certain only that our good fortune is luck, not reward a debt discharged with brief, erratic tender: life spent making this place mean something we are proud to signify.

A fun fact, shared already by Senator Cardozo, is that I was one of Louise Arbour’s first students when she came to Osgoode. Less known is that she was only the second woman on the faculty in those early 1970s. Also, she was then in her first English-speaking position — and was unmistakably brilliant, even when she wasn’t that comfortable with the language. That was long ago now.

I was a founding member of the women’s caucus of students, formed in response to the blatant sexism blooming because the number of women law students leaped from less than 10% to over 30% over one summer; frankly, the patriarchy was in shock.

Such are the adventures that shape us. And here we are, in another bastion of patriarchy, where — as Senator Dasko reminded us yesterday in her excellent farewell speech — 55% of senators are now female, an achievement I doubt will last. However, I am grateful that my decade here has been this decade.

I have a few observations to share on this unique place and institutional culture. Allow me to begin with sincere gratitude laced with a fondness that did not come quickly. What a complex, multifaceted institution this is, created and protected by the Constitution of Canada in 1867 and with a decision-making architecture largely unchanged to this day. Yet it’s exemplified positively by so many of the people here today: parliamentarians, former colleagues, students, interns, staff, friends and beloved family members who nudged me toward this place and have sustained me through many a moment of questioning if I should stay.

I hold this eagle feather given to me by a Manitoba matriarch, Leslie Spillett, who handed it to me just before my swearing-in beside my sponsor, the late great Murray Sinclair, and said, “Keep this with you. You are going to need it.”

Please join me on my journey of gratitude in looking back to how I came to be here. Before I go back to 2015, when my wise, strong adult children, Jon and David — David lives in Bangkok and can’t be with us today — and our family friend Dr. Susan Bazilli convinced me to apply, after David had tea with the inimitable then-senator Nancy Ruth, who, together with former senator Janis Johnson, had been encouraging me to apply, I need to express gratitude to dear friends and guides. I will begin with the dynamic duo of our late beloved Stephen Lewis — I can cry and talk at the same time — and ever activist Michele Landsberg, who, when I sought their advice about coming to the Senate, told me I must. But then I said, “But you’ve both been asked to be senators, and you said no.” And they said, “We’re NDP. We can’t say yes to the Senate, but you have to go.” Many a time over the years, I sat on their couch or in their garden and whined, and always they sustained me and sent me back here.

If I had not returned to Manitoba, I would not be here. Some of you may know that in 1981, when the Charter was being negotiated, the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy — one of the finest and most innovative foreign ministers Canada has had — and I, as a spokeswoman for the Ad Hoc Committee of Canadian Women on the Constitution, did not agree on much. However, in 2008, when he was president of my alma mater, the University of Winnipeg, he took me to lunch. He looked across the table and said, “It’s time to come home. We need you here.” Within a few months, I had resigned as Chief Commissioner for the Human Rights Commission in Saskatchewan. I returned to my home province of Manitoba after about 40 years away to serve as the first dean (principal) of the Global College, to build a new human rights undergraduate program. What a gift he gave me.

Two of my best former students, Chelsea Caldwell and Matthew Parent, are here today.

Eight years later, I was honoured and, with many others, especially big-L Liberals, surprised that I was called to the Senate of Canada to become an independent senator for Manitoba under the unprecedented, arm’s-length, community-driven selection process established by newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Please join me in welcoming in our gallery today a principal creator of the new selection process that brought many of us here when she was the Minister for Democratic Institutions, the Honourable Maryam Monsef.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called me to ask if I would agree to be appointed as, and to remain, an independent senator, I asked him, “Why me?” I recall he chuckled and said something like, “I hear you like to change things, and the Senate needs reform.”

He then asked me, “And why are you interested in being a senator?” To which I replied:

It’s in my application: My priority is to bring civil society, especially young, diverse leaders, to the Senate, and the Senate to them.

Indeed, with the first expenditure of my budget in January 2017, after I had a couple of months to try to figure this place out, I called upon former students and former research assistants, from different parts of the country by then, to come to Ottawa for the briefing that each of us receives as a new senator, during which we’re told what we can do, what our budget is and the various parameters to which we need to pay attention. Those young people heard exactly what I heard. I then asked them to spend the next day and a half building my parliamentary agenda. I have pretty much continued that to this day.

I will note that Matthew Parent — who is with us today — and Katrina Leclerc — who subsequently came to work for me — were both in that consulting group. Katrina is a little busy today because, at the age of nearly 30, she’s about to earn her PhD.

They said to me, “We recommend three things.” The first one came from mainly the francophones in the group. They said to me, “Francophone youth in this country were the very first to define the expansion of voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds as being crucial to our democracy, so you need to make that your priority.”

Another piece of advice they gave me was to have parties.

I said, “Have parties? In the Senate?”

They told me, “Well, the thing is, most people outside of the Senate do not know what you do and most people don’t feel welcome, so figure out ways to bring them into the Senate to celebrate what civil society can do and already does.”

Indeed, you may have noticed that my amazing team and I have held a good many gatherings for senators on a whole range of issues, and these are always in partnership with civil society leaders.

As I was making my way here today, I was reminded that many of the people who serve in the Senate are remarkable in their kindness and courtesy, and we senators are blessed to go about our business in such a culture of service. As we make our way to this chamber, we often get on our very own shuttle bus, to warm greetings from drivers, such as Pierre, Patrick, Armand or Garry, and, when I started, the ever-friendly André Perrier.

All along the way, we are guarded by the officers of our protective service. As a senator under a death threat recently, I know how thorough and caring members of our force can be. We walk into our Senate cafeteria — although I do miss the Parliamentary Dining Room — to be greeted by Lou and her smiling, efficient team of Stephanie, Ella, Lucie, Katriana and Sandra.

Last week a class was meeting with me, and one young woman became very ill. My wonderful parliamentary affairs assistant, Donneton, stayed with her in the bathroom, while a crew of cleaners and a guard swept in to help. When a woman cleaner saw the situation, she left and quietly returned with a full set of clean clothes to allow our young guest to leave with dignity.

Before senators reach the chamber, we have been supported by a bevy of skilled staff. I am delighted to be joined here by my former chief of staff of almost five years, the inimitable John Inca Anderson — lucky Senator Mohamed — and former intern, turned staff, turned brilliant lawyer and judicial clerk Stéphanie St Jacques. With them is my current young, bright team: Donneton Brown, who went from intern to staff; my dedicated executive assistant, Patrick Lafleur; and my communications manager, Jayden Paquet-Noiseux, who was a 16-year-old Quebec high school student when we met and became a volunteer, then an intern and is now part-time staff while finishing his first degree at the University of Ottawa.

Speaking of the University of Ottawa, I would like to thank Josée Desmarais and her team for facilitating the process whereby every semester for the past eight years, law students — over 70 so far — receive academic credit for their work in my parliamentary learning lab of an office. That was another recommendation from the initial gathering of young people at the beginning of my term.

They really do work hard: they write drafts for Question Period — as Senator Moreau may notice, there are very good questions. They write speaking notes. They write briefing notes. They monitor the committees that I sit on. Interns James and Ellie are here, joined by recent interns Ola and Sasha. Ola has earned a law degree. Sasha is in Grade 11 and looking forward to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights study on democratic inclusion and resilience. I thank all of you for that gift yesterday.

Senators arrive in the chamber, always greeted warmly by efficient, often effervescent pages. We are always greeted, except for today, by the Usher of the Black Rod, Mr. Greg Peters, and the amazing John Shand — another Manitoban — along with the resplendently robed table officers led by the first woman Clerk of the Senate, Shaila Anwar. And, of course, our President, our Speaker, also from Manitoba, is the Honourable Raymonde Gagné.

Truly, there is no other job in this country with the privilege, independence, security, amenities and resources — financial and human — that senators have.

So sometimes I ask myself, “Why are we so timid so often?”

I have a few more people to thank before I share more observations. David Taylor, who was a Senate chief page-cum-law student-cum-lawyer, working with the renowned parliamentarian from the House and the Senate, the Honourable Serge Joyal, who has provided me with advice from my first skirmish with the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, to reviewing the Ethics and Conflict of Interest Code for Senators to this day.

As I acknowledge the Honourable James O’Reilly, our new Senate Ethics Officer, who issued his report finding that I did not breach the code after two senators made a complaint against me 42 months ago for my attempts — many successful — to save Afghan women when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, and democratic forces were reduced to encircling the Karzai airport. I must thank, from my heart, the one and only Donald Bayne, who has represented me pro bono, with tenacity, wisdom, brilliance and generosity for the past year of these three and a half long, secretive years, funded in large part by friends, particularly my dear law school friend Candice Hanson.

Donald Bayne.

I was a “fangirl” before I ever met you, and I’m a bigger “fangirl” now.

Thank you to the doyenne of women-centred psychiatry, the esteemed Dr. Gail Robinson, who saw the stress I was trying to manage and treated me. The day I told her I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, she told me, “I’ve known you a long time. That’s not who you are. You are not a quitter.”

Dr. Robinson, you couldn’t be here with us today, but your counselling, and the antidepressants, helped me get through this until I could speak today.

To the senators who stood up for me, including senators Peter Boehm, Frances Lankin, Leo Housakos and Rebecca Patterson, and who came with me to the House of Commons parliamentary inquiry into my efforts to save Afghan women — my sister‑senators, Senators Audette, Moodie, Pate, Galvez, McCallum and Lankin — all I can say to you is that I will always treasure your support.

Thank you to my long-time colleague Asma Faizi of the Afghan Women’s Organization, who is with us today, and to Shaima Karimi, also with us today, who escaped from Afghanistan just before the bombing of the Kabul airport and is now in her master’s program at Carleton University.

And to my sister-senator Mary Jane McCallum, chi meegwetch. We laugh when, from time to time, people mix us up — Manitoba; Mary Jane, Marilou; McCallum, McPhedran — because so often we have stood together, often quite alone, and, of course, because we look so much alike.

In her essential guide Ally Is a Verb, Rose LeMay, who is here with us today, notes:

The work for reconciliation, equity and safety for Indigenous People will have positive impacts for everybody. When one of us is at risk, we are all at risk.

When I returned to Manitoba, I asked my friend the Honourable Anita Neville — and I didn’t know that Senator Osler was going to quote her today — who the Indigenous women leaders in Winnipeg I needed to meet were. She led me to the Manitoba Matriarchs Diane Redsky, Sandra DeLaronde, Hilda Anderson-Pyrz and Celeste McKay, who have taught me so much.

I will tell one short anecdote that illustrates the power of these women. As you know, likely, we had a significant delegation from the European Union, all the ambassadors, come to Manitoba not long ago. In advance of that, the wonderful Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Margriet Vonno, who I’m honoured to say is a friend, was coming a day early. I said, “Why don’t we reach out and see if we can have lunch with some of the Manitoba Matriarchs?”

Of course, her office got into it, and I got a memo from the office saying, “Please just tell us where the ambassador needs to be, and she will pay for this lunch.” I wrote back and said, “Oh, no, that’s not how it works with the Manitoba Matriarchs. We will go where we are told to go. They will take care of it all in their own way, and we will both behave.” It went incredibly well. We had an entirely Indigenous meal at the amazing Bistro on Notre Dame, and I think it’s fair to say it was one of the highlights for the ambassador of her time in Manitoba.

Before my life was so enriched by the Manitoba Matriarchs, I had been long inspired by the consummate ally Shelagh Day, co‑founder of the Feminist Alliance for International Action, or FAFIA. She worked with brilliant Indigenous women, like lawyer and litigation trailblazer Sharon Donna McIvor, who described the long-term litigation strategy developed with allied lawyers, like LEAF co-founder and brilliant litigator Mary Eberts, in her journal article “Aboriginal Women Unmasked: Using Equality Litigation to Advance Women’s Rights” like this:

At first glance, the cases may appear to be about civil and political rights, but, in fact, they all involve issues of social and economic inequality. These issues are inseparable for Aboriginal women, and Aboriginal women’s lives make evident the need for interpretations of Aboriginal women’s sex equality rights that recognize the indivisibility of civil and political rights and social and economic rights.

As I get closer to my observations, I want to turn to a book that was given to me last week in the lobby of the Château Laurier, which is entitled A People’s Senate for Canada. It’s written by Helen Forsey, who is the daughter of the legendary senator Eugene Forsey.

This is something he had to say about reform in 1978:

A reform many of us are rather keen on is, on appointment, every senator should sever completely his ties with any political party at least for senatorial purposes.

Once we are in here, we should regard ourselves as independents. There should be no party whips, and on every bill, we should vote exactly as we see fit. Not on the basis of what the whip tells us. This is what I —

— Eugene Forsey —

— have done all along. No whip has ever come near me. If he did, he would get a flea in his ear, I can tell you.

I also want to reference someone who is very often referenced. That is our late and fairly short-term colleague Ian Shugart, whom I had met many times over the years in various of his high-level positions in the federal government. But in his address to us, he said:

Honourable senators, whether it is what we say to or about each other, or how we learn again to listen and dialogue with others who don’t share our outlook, or how we guard the health of our institutions — we need to relearn the virtue of restraint.

Now that word — “restraint” — has become very popular in this chamber, and it’s been interpreted in many different ways.

Senator Shugart went on to say:

Canada is a big, diverse country — geographically, socially, culturally, economically and philosophically. For each of us, for parties and for institutions, restraint may begin with acknowledging that our point of view — legitimate as it is — is not the only point of view.

And from this, I want to give one of my observations. For me, there is a considerable distance between the restraint that has been defined here by a number of senators as being one of not speaking and not acting, even when we see things in legislation or policy that concern us greatly. For me, there is a pathway, and it doesn’t start with that inaction. There are many steps along the way before a decision to take no action or to say nothing or do nothing is made.

I want to acknowledge that there are times when that is surely appropriate, but there’s another kind of restraint, and that is the restraint to not look away, to not be silent. It is restraint so that we do not succumb to a kind of timid approach to being senators.

The history of this institution is specifically based on the writings of John Stuart Mill. In 1864, at the Quebec Conference, several of the founding Fathers of Confederation directly quoted John Stuart Mill from his treatise On Liberty, and it’s nice to remember that he was the parliamentarian in Great Britain who proposed that women should get the vote. He, of course, was voted down — it was 1867 — but it was nevertheless his initiative.

And it’s nice to know that the Fathers of Confederation were so influenced by someone who was so far ahead of his time in terms of understanding what equality does to increase the viability of a democracy and to strengthen by far the most necessary asset for a democracy — people, human beings.

I want to briefly speak about the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA, as one of the areas where I hope you will pay some more attention.

When I congratulated Senator Loffreda on becoming chair of the committee, he said something like, “Well, I hope I can make a positive difference.” I said, “Senator, you probably won’t change CIBA, but CIBA will change you.”

And by that, I am not casting aspersions on individual people here. I want to talk about the architecture of self-governance in the Senate of Canada. I want to acknowledge that we work within a closed system — a completely closed system — of decision making that, for the most part, is in secret. There is no appeal if the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA, decides, in secret or sometimes in public, to punish. There are no limits to what CIBA can decide to do to an individual senator.

There are two examples that I want to bring to you today because they are unfinished business for this place, and most of you here don’t know about them.

In my case, largely due to the generosity of Donald Bayne, costs in defending me as a result of the complaints made by two senators that I was overreaching as a senator in helping Afghan women escape were in the range of $100,000 over 42 months. Much of that, Mr. Bayne chose not to bill because he said it was too unjust, and he was not going to walk away.

I’m sure there are many cases I don’t know about, but there are two that I do. One, with his permission, is my dear colleague Senator Brazeau. The other, who is not here with us any longer, is retired senator Mike Duffy. I don’t know all of the details, but I do know quite a bit about the outcomes.

In my respectful opinion, there are injustices that remain as a result of how these two senators were treated. There was financial punishment that cost Senator Brazeau what he estimates to be about half a million dollars, and I know, from corresponding with Senator Duffy, that we’re talking about well over $1 million. For years, these senators were not paid one cent of their salaries, and they had no appeal mechanism available to them. There are no standards for decision making when this kind of punishment is being meted out.

I’m greatly concerned about the way in which the architecture of the self-governance of this chamber results in emotion-based decision making. We’re human. That’s what happens when we don’t set up guardrails and don’t have standards, accountability or transparency as a result of being so secretive all the time.

I invite you to think about this because there is a bottom line here for every single senator. If you actually look at the degree to which the power of self-governance can destroy a senator’s life, one needs to understand that, basically, we have no Charter rights inside this bubble of self-governance. If you happen to be on the receiving end of the punishment, you have nowhere to go to make an appeal. Nowhere. There is no right of appeal.

With regard to Senator Shugart’s comment and his exhortation around restraint, which has become so popular in this chamber, let me suggest to you that, often, when you think about the equality of senators, it is, in my opinion, largely a sham. I say that because of my experience of being the one who gets to eat the crumbs when the rest of you get to eat the cookies because you are in groups and I’m not, and neither is Senator Brazeau. However, what if we were to choose, as a standard, fairness? What if we were to choose, as a standard in our decision making, transparency and accountability? If we can’t get outside this bubble, there is no court that can touch this place. De facto, we have no Charter rights as senators inside of self-governance, but what if we were to choose to apply standards of fairness?

In one of my CIBA skirmishes early on in my career here, I mentioned the rules of natural justice. A number of senators just burst out laughing. One of them said to me, “Don’t you realize that we don’t have that here? That doesn’t apply here.” Honestly, I had not realized that. I came in arguing my appeal entirely on the rules of natural justice and was basically laughed out of the place. I lost the appeal.

Please, give some consideration to the idea that this place would not be harmed if decisions were made on principles of fairness and the rules of natural justice. This place would be strengthened if there were true equality among senators to bring our best, to participate at our best and not to be punished when, in the end, all of the allegations are proven to be untrue, as was the case with Senator Duffy after his trial. Read Justice Vaillancourt’s 308-page decision. Senator Duffy was completely exonerated on all 31 charges, yet he is being punished to this day with the results of what was done here in this chamber.

I will leave it to those who want to speak more with Senator Brazeau about his experience, but it seems to me to be a very rough calculation — “rough,” as in, tough and unfair — to go from a $140 discrepancy found by all of the investigators involved to a cost of almost half a million dollars to family, health and all of the things that we need in order to function well as senators and human beings.

Let me thank you for your time. I know you didn’t really have a choice, but thank you for listening. I hope that you will give this some thought.

As an old feminist warhorse, I bid you adieu. Thank you, meegwetch.